Are people inherently good?

No

3 of 83

by Ronnie Dauber

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People are not inherently good because if it that were true then there would have been no need for Jesus to come, and nothing for Him to save us from. But He came to save us from our sinful nature and redeem us from the curse of the law. (Gal. 3:13)

In the beginning, God made Adam and Eve and placed them in the beautiful Garden of Eden, and said in Genesis 1:31 that it was good. By this He meant that the job He did was complete and satisfying. In fact, He walked with Adam and talked with him in the evenings (Gen 3:8,10). Since God is Holy and can only be on Holy ground, we know that the Garden of Eden was Holy ground and that there was no sin present.

This was the only time in the history of mankind where people were good. It was short lived and Adam and Eve soon fell to the wiles of sin as shown in Genesis 3:1-7. This is the first recorded act of the disobedience of man. God told Adam directly not to eat or even touch a certain tree in the middle of the garden, and Adam passed that rule on to Eve.

Eve, however, was deceived by a serpent that had been filled and empowered by Satan for the sole purpose of bringing sin to mankind. It convinced Eve that God would not kill them and that He was simply jealous of them becoming as smart as He was. Since nothing had ever died in the garden, it was likely difficult for her to perceive what death even was, and her focus would have been on being more like God. The good life she lived was the only one she knew, and so she was tricked into eating the fruit from the forbidden tree.

However, when Adam listened to Eve and ate fruit from the same tree, he committed sin against God because he disobeyed God. Eve ate the fruit and that was wrong but Adam ate the fruit in disobedience to God and he knew it, and by eating the fruit he committed a sin against God. And now that an act of sin was present in the Garden of Eden, God was forced to cast them out lest they corrupt His garden.

Genesis 3:17 says that God put them out of the perfect garden and cursed them. Yet, He did not leave them without hope. Genesis 3:15 says that He promised to send someone who would deliver them from their sins, and this person unknown to them at the time, was Jesus. From that time on, man has had an evil heart as noted in Genesis 8:21 which says, the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Even Adam and Eve had to bring offerings to God as an atonement for their sin so that they could talk with God. Remember, God is Holy and people now had sin, and they needed to have those sins put aside or forgiven to speak with God. And even Cain, during one of his offerings, didn't offer what God had asked for in repentance for his sin, but rather he decided what God should get. In essence, he made himself more important than God. This was another direct offence or sin towards God. And the sin spread as proved when Adam's first son, Cain, killed his second son, Abel, establishing the first murder.

Sin grew uncontrollably and Genesis 6:13 says that God told Noah that He is going to destroy the earth because it was filled with evil. It rained for forty days and the inhabited earth was flooded, destroying everyone except Noah, his wife and their three sons. Yet, sin overtook man again. Why? Because even though Noah and his family loved and served God, they were of a sinful nature and even though they taught their family about God, eventually they died and the truth was hidden as the sinful nature of their heirs became dominant once again. Sin was alive and couldn't be stopped without a sacrifice.

King David said in Psalms 51:5 that he was conceived in sin. He wasn't saying that his parents were committing an act of sin when they conceived him, but that he was born with sin. And we were all born in sin, yet God is not leaving us there. He promised Eve He'd send someone to overcome sin and the curse of the world, and He did. He sent Jesus.

John 3:16 says that He sent His own Son as a sacrifice to take the punishment and die on our behalf for our sins so that there would be no sin between us and God. Does that make us inherently good? No, that makes us saved from the inherent sin that will only bring us into punishment and death.

We are not inherently good because we are an heir of Adam and Eve and they sinned and were cursed for their sins and were told that only a saviour could redeem mankind back to the perfect state they once knew. Jesus died on the cross, took away our sins and made us whole through His sufferings and His shed blood. He was condemned when He died because He bore our sins and those sins sent him to the place of eternal punishment, which is Hell.

Isaiah 53:5 says, He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

But, He broke the chains of Hell and death and rose again completely free from the burden of our sins, proving that He took our sins to Hell for us and set us free. When we accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour, we inherit His righteousness and are returned to God because of His righteousness. But even then we cannot be called good. Mark 10:18 tells us that even Jesus said the only one good is God.

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